Thread: How is immigration reform none of Mexico's business?

http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impr ... ?var=27024

How is immigration reform none of Mexico's business?

December 05, 2005

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Diehard optimists still hoping for a forward-looking binational migration accord based on mutual respect and regional cooperation got hit with a cruel dose of reality last week. As a flood of xenophobia-tinged border security and immigrant-crackdown bills work their way through both houses of the U.S. Congress, President Bush delivered a long-awaited major speech that left no doubt about how Mexico's neighbor and trading partner will deal with reform.
The message comes down to this: The United States will not regularize the millions of undocumented immigrants working in its territory. It will instead seek more efficient ways to find them, punish them, and deport them. It will not work with Mexico to find creative solutions to what's essentially a cross-border job supply-and-demand inequity. Instead it will seal the border against Mexican workers using every means available, from Berlin-style walls to unmanned aircraft.

And it will do these things on its own as it sees fit. Mexico will just have to live with whatever the United States comes up with.

The reaction here to the speech was predictably negative. Spokespersons for mall three major parties issued statements condemning the shortsightedness of Bush's hardline, unilateralist approach. Foreign Relations Secretary Ernesto Derbez criticized the very idea of border walls, a criticism President Fox has voiced in the past.

Yet the complaints were not as vociferous as might have been expected. It's as though Mexico has resigned itself for the time being to a passive role in an issue the United States is going to dominate one way or another. Perhaps with foresight, Colegio de la Frontera president Jorge Santibáñez Romellón warned a year ago that there was no way to steer the United States away from a hardline border policy that approaches migration as a security issue not open to the give and take of negotiation. “I think it's better for Mexico to face up to this reality that to obsessively insist on a migration accord that nobody believes in any more and that isn't going to happen in the reasonably short term anyway,� he wrote.

A more justifiable dose of reality that sovereignty-minded Mexico should have no trouble swallowing is the United States' right to control its borders and regulate immigration. One can advocate virtually open two-way migration limited only by the job market, and still recognize that the current chaos of clandestine crossings and irregular employment can't continue indefinitely. Bush put it well when he said, “TheAmerican people should not have to choose between a welcoming society and a lawful society. We can have both at the same time.�

But there's doubt among pols and pundits on both sides of the border that Bush's plan can lead to either. He may have doomed his efforts at the outset by trying to synthesize two approaches - one that will appease the rabid nativists whose support he still needs, and one that might actually work.

For example, there's skepticism that a beefed-up border will accomplish much more than shifting job seekers to more dangerous entry points. Hence it won't result in fewer illegal immigrants, just more dead ones. A proposed 2,000-mile, border-long wall from Chula Vista to Brownsville might work somewhat better, but at an unacceptably high cost to the treasury, the environment, and what's left of the United States' image abroad. The Bush administration opposes such a fence, but it's included in some of the House bills.

Then there's the question of what to do with all the existing undocumented immigrants. The most realistic (not to mention easiest and most humane) solution would be to regularize their status, which would clear the decks for a smoother implementation of two key elements in the Bush plan â€â€

Working without Mexico on immigration and border issues is a serious mistake by the United States. Working against Mexico on this issue, as is close to being the case already, would be more than serious. It would be dangerous.

I guess Mexico would be offended, OK. Gee, they could get back at the US but creating a Mexico from which its citizens wouldn't want to escape by the hundreds of thousands.